View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by European Scientific Journal (European Scientific Institute) European Scientific Journal July 2015 edition vol.11, No.19 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 NIGERIA’S 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: BETWEEN DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION AND CHANGE Adeolu Durotoye, PhD Head, Department of International Relations and Diplomacy College of Social and Management Sciences, Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria Abstract The conduct of the 2015 Presidential election in Nigeria recorded mixed outcomes. Although fears that Election Day would be marred by serious violence were allayed to a large extent, some instances of technical hitches, vote buying and other forms of electoral manipulations were recorded in some parts. However, these electoral hitches were not sufficient to alter the expected outcome of the election. For the first time in Nigeria’s political history, an incumbent president lost power in a general election. Has Nigeria’s democracy consolidated satisfactorily? The burden of this paper is to examine the trajectories of the 2015 presidential election relying on both qualitative and quantitative methods of research. The paper concludes that much has to be done if Nigeria’s democracy is to scale the second turn-over test Huntington establishes as the bench mark which if a new democracy survives two turnovers of power, then it has consolidated satisfactorily. Keywords: Nigeria, Election/Voting, 2015 Presidential Elections, Democracy, Political Change Introduction Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election was unique in many ways. First, it marked an unprecedented uninterrupted 5th presidential election since return to democracy in 1999. The first Republic lasted only 6 years from 1960 to 1966, the second Republic lasted only 4 years from 1979 to 1984, while the third Republic was truncated after 4 years of expensive transition programmes between 1989 and 1993. Second, it was unique because for the first time, an incumbent president lost an election. Even though many incumbent governors have lost elections at the state level, the “power of incumbency” has always been potent at the federal level. 169 European Scientific Journal July 2015 edition vol.11, No.19 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 Third, this marked the first time the loser in a presidential election will call to congratulate the winner even before the official results were finalised. Fourth, it is also the first time there will be no post-election violence despite predictions by different observers and commentators including the US. Fifth, it is also the first time an electronic device called the Card reader and a chip card called the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) were introduced by the electoral body (INEC). Has Nigeria come of age politically? Are all these a fluke due only to the overwhelming desire for change or a true test of democratic consolidation? In dealing with the research questions raised above, this paper is organised under the following subtopics; 1. What is Democratic Consolidation 2. Elections in Nigeria 3. Run-up to the 2015 presidential election 4. Conduct of election 5. Why PDP Jonathan lost 6. Recommendation/Conclusion Democratic Consolidation The concept of democratic consolidation evolves out of concern about whether the former authoritarian regimes will be able to sustain their newly found democracy. The idea is that the task of sustaining democracy is as difficult as the task of establishing it. This has brought the concept of democratic consolidation to the centre of academic discourse. Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that means it is unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia). Diamond (1999) describes democratic consolidation as the process of achieving broad and deep legitimation such that all significant political actors believe that popular rule is better for their society than any other alternative they can imagine. (Diamond L. (1999). Hence, it is a state of developed democratic cultures where political actors adhere to the democratic rules of the game. Democratic Consolidation has also been defined as series of continuous actions and changes geared towards the replacement of an existing system of authoritarian and undemocratic rule. (Yagboyaju, (2007). According to Asiwaju (2000), democratic consolidation implies the internalisation of democratic culture and the institutionalisation of democratic best process. 170 European Scientific Journal July 2015 edition vol.11, No.19 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 Put another way, consolidation suggests there is a democratic foundation being strengthened and built upon. Tinubu, (2009). Nwokeke Osinakachukwu and Jayum A. Jawan (2011) wrote that democratic consolidation “implies a democracy that can last for the test of time…This is a democracy that will come and stay and which cannot come to an end suddenly or abruptly through unconstitutional acts such as military coups or dictatorships”, (p.130). In my opinion, democratic consolidation is a journey and not a destination. It is a process not an event. It implies that the people of a particular country are imbibing and displaying a democratic culture that propels democracy and makes democracy continuously irreversible. Hence, a research into democratic consolidation in Nigeria should look at those input and output mechanisms that make democracy thrive. Some scholars have argued that that the process by which a democracy becomes consolidated involves the creation and improvement of secondary institutions of the democracy. Linz & Stepan (1996). On the other hand, some other scholars like O'Donnell (1996)' have argued that the institutionalization of electoral rules is not the most crucial feature of democratic consolidation. Rather the informal practices of actors are very vital in democratic consolidation. Consolidation therefore occurs when the actors in a system follow the formal rules of the democratic institution. Contradicting this position are Gasiorowski and Power (1998). They asserted that the process-centric literature on democratic consolidation has paid inadequate attention to the effects of structural factors. Focusing on the Third World countries, they used three indicators of consolidation and multivariate statistical techniques. The authors' main finding is that development-related socioeconomic factors, the contagion effect of democratic neighbours, and high inflation each strongly affect the likelihood of consolidation, although the latter was significant only in the early part of the period studied. Several other factors have no apparent effect, including several measures dealing with political culture and the design of democratic institutions. These three factors together strongly predict which Third World democracies achieve consolidation. In another vein, Regilme Jr. (2013) has controversially suggested that the cause of non-democratic consolidation in developing countries is brain drain in which high skilled workers from developing countries migrate to high-income and capital-rich countries. This leaves many new democracies in the developing world problems in terms of steering effective governance due to the lack of high-skilled professionals. Focusing on Nigeria, some have argued that it is too early to talk of democratic consolidation in Nigeria. “With over 10,000 dead in communal 171 European Scientific Journal July 2015 edition vol.11, No.19 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 conflicts and an exponential increase in societal violence, many will argue that it is too early to talk of democratic consolidation in Nigeria. Indeed, the fact that the public still casts doubt on the state’s capacity to manage domestic crises and to protect the security of life and property underscores primarily the depth of disenchantment with the state of things. As Nigeria drifts down the path of increasing violent conflict, perhaps we should first move away from current disappointment and ask if anything could really have been different from the current situation, given the provenance of civilian rule”. Fayemi (2012). Fayemi argued further that it is difficult to “have democracy without democrats” because of the dominance of the political party hierarchy by retired military officers and civilians closely connected to the military elite who set the tone for a party formation that pays little attention to ideology. Tinubu’s (2009) Verdict on Nigeria’s democracy is that there is as yet “no true democracy” in Nigeria. He argued that the period between 1999 and 2009 was at best, 10 years of civil rule, even if all the structures of a democratic setting, the Presidency, the National Assembly and the Judiciary (at the federal level); and the Governorship, the State Legislatures and the Judiciary (at the state levels) were all in operation, “those democratic structures are built on the quicksand of a general anti-democratic mindset: faulty elections, dubious mandates and abuse of security forces, by the ruling party, to rig elections”, etc. Analysing Obasanjo’s presidency, Tinubu, himself a state governor between 1999 and 2007 argued that Nigeria’s was a democratic dispensation run on military temper”. “…..the conduct of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo as elected president, left little or no doubt that there was a sort of “Army Arrangement”…..His style was gruff and dismissive. He barely disguised his